The Spell In My Pocket (excerpt)

This is just a very brief 100-word-or-so excerpt from my forthcoming book on making mojos. Of course, the title is tentative and could change at any moment, but for now, it’s slated to be Making Mojos that Work: The Untold Secret to Real Results. Thought you mind find it interesting. It’s really a bit about my heritage.

My heritage is Appalachian – primarily Cherokee and Scots-Irish. The majority of the people of Appalachia, being descended from Indigenous Tribes of North America, often held (and many still do) beliefs that all things are alive, that all things have spirits. In modern terms, we call this “animism,” and, in effect, it’s the opposite of most modern psychological perspectives. Modern psychology-based methods of “magic” sometimes tell us that spirits are “aspects of the subconscious,” or, “psychological constructs.” But where I’m from, all things are actual, living spirit beings, with desires of their own. They are far from figments of the imagination.

So the plant White Snakeroot, for example, has a spirit. It soaks up sunlight, it likes to drink water and it consumes energy to grow and live. Likewise, a piece of Amethyst has a spirit; the base elements of sulphur and oxygen form the Amethyst; oxygen is a gas that many living things breathe in order to stay alive. Thus, White Snakeroot and Amethyst are two examples of living beings. And since these are living beings, they must have spirits and quirks and personalities